Tombs in ancient Oxyrhynchus

The ancient site of Oxyrhynchus, south of modern Cairo, is best known for the papyrus remains that were discovered back in 1897 (see: City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons). It took many years to start deciphering the many bits and pieces, a process that is still ongoing, as detailed in my earlier post, Get involved with Oxyrhynchus.
 
This work is full of surprises. For instance, the 1922 reconstruction and translation of a poem by Sappho of Lesbos, who lived circa 630-570 BC. By 2005, the missing part of this poem had been found on a papyrus held at the University of Cologne. It is wonderful and unique to finally have a complete poem by one of the greatest lyric poetesses of antiquity.
 
By now, it transpires that 80 volumes of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri have been published, thanks to the relentless efforts of Professor Peter Parsons of the University of Oxford. The documents have largely contributed to a better understanding and knowledge of the history of Egypt and Rome.
 

More than a hundred years after the site was discovered, excavations are carried out by the Institute of Ancient Near East Studies of the University of Barcelona. It is hard to believe that Oxyrhynchus once was the third-largest city in Egypt, as it boomed under the Ptolemies, who ruled after the death of Alexander. It was Christianized with the rest of Egypt, as testified by the many churches and monasteries that were built. During Roman and Byzantine occupation, however, the city gradually declined. Life changed dramatically after the arrival of the Muslims in 641 AD, and Oxyrhynchus was eventually abandoned.

 
The discovery of the papyrus garbage dump slowly revived the general interest in this forgotten city. Since 2020, Spanish archaeologists have concentrated their efforts on the city’s necropolis. Each excavation season has its own harvest of tombs and grave goods. In 2023, for instance, six funerary complexes from Persian (Sassanid), Roman, and Coptic times and 16 individual tombs were discovered.
 

Last year, in 2024, a collection of 52 mummies from Ptolemaic times was exposed. Thirteen of the bodies had golden tongues in their mouth, a clear sign of preparation for the afterlife, and one had a gold plate on its fingernails. Precious gifts like scarabs, amulets of Egyptian gods, and a terracotta statuette of the god Harpocrates (the Greek and Roman version of the Egyptian child-god Horus) were also retrieved. Another tomb counted three burial chambers whose walls were covered with texts and colorful funerary scenes depicting several Egyptian gods. Also, four limestone sarcophagi have been found.

 
This all sounds very promising as the finds in Oxyrhynchus give new insights into life and death during Ptolemaic and Roman times.

[Pictures from the Universitat de Barcelona]

A Greek theatre, a first in the Ionian Islands

 As a matter of course, we expect about every Greek city to have a theater. This is, however, not the case on the Greek islands – until now. 

The Ionian island of Lefkada, situated along the west coast of Greece, lies about halfway between Corfu (ancient Corcyra) and Patras and has surprised every archaeologist with the presence of a large theater. 

In the 7^th century BC, many Corinthians set off to establish new colonies, such as Syracuse in Sicily, and some settled in Lefkada. This island is best known for its white cliffs, where the poetess Sappho jumped to her death in despair rather than facing an impossible love. 

Thanks to its strategic position along busy maritime routes, the city-state reached high cultural and economic prosperity. Archaeological research exposed sections of the city wall, residential structures, the harbor, and, more recently, remains of a theater on the northeastern slope of Koulmos Hill. 

[Picture from Greece Is]

Excavations started seriously in 2017, and soon the entire theater was exposed. It was established that it was built in the 4^th century BC and consisted of 21 rows of seats arranged around the orchestra. Originally, it could seat 3,500 spectators, but later extensions created space for over 10,000 visitors as more seats were added above an inserted diazoma. 

The latest excavation gave a good insight into the preserved sections of retaining walls (north and south), the seating area, the orchestra, and the stage itself. Many decorative elements have been revealed, as well as three beautifully carved thrones decorated with lion legs, dolphins, birds, sirens, and more. These were intended for priests or other city officials.

The fate of the theater was closely tied to that of Lefkada, which gradually declined in Roman times. As the city was abandoned at the end of antiquity, the theater’s stones were reused for later constructions elsewhere. 

The poem was not just a love poem

No, and it was not a love poem written by Sappho but by Shu-Sin, a Sumerian King who ruled around 2,000 BC. Well, it may not be exactly a love poem but it certainly was a way to celebrate beauty and love. 

A close study has revealed that according to Sumerian belief, it was the sacred duty of the country’s ruler to marry a priestess and votary (i.e. a devote adherent of a cult or religion) of Inanna, the goddess of love and procreation once a year. It was celebrated on New Year’s Day to ensure the fertility of the soil and fecundity in the womb. 

Marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi, TangLung, World History

The ceremony started with festivities and banquets accompanied by music, song, and dance. It was during such a celebration that the ‘bride’ of King Shun-Sin would recite the poem as part of the sacred rite. 

The King would symbolically marry the goddess Inanna, in order to ensure fertility and prosperity for the coming year. 

Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,
Lion, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet. 

You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.

Bridegroom, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber,
You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Lion, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber. 

Bridegroom, let me caress you,

My precious caress is more savory than honey,

In the bedchamber, honey-filled,

Let me enjoy your goodly beauty,
Lion, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey. 

Bridegroom, you have taken your pleasure of me,
Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies,
My father, he will give you gifts. 

Your spirit, I know where to cheer your spirit,
Bridegroom, sleep in our house until dawn,
Your heart, I know where to gladden your heart,
Lion, sleep in our house until dawn. 

You, because you love me,
Give me pray of your caresses,
My lord god, my lord protector,
My Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil's heart,
Give my pray of your caresses.
Your place goodly as honey, pray lay your hand on it,
Bring your hand over like a gishban-garment,
Cup your hand over it like a gishban-sikin-garment

The text appeared on a cuneiform tablet discovered during excavations in Nineveh in 1846-1847 as part of the Library of King Ashurbanipal. It was taken to the Museum of Istanbul where it remained hidden in a drawer until 1951. We have to thank Samuel Noah Kramer for retrieving and translating this lovely work of art. 

[for more details, please refer to this article in World History] 

What Oxyrhynchus revealed so far

Several years ago, I was at the Getty Villa in Malibu to be treated to two theatrical plays from antiquity, one Greek, The Woman from Samos by Menander, and one Roman, Casina by Plautus.

Set at dusk in the Peristyle of the Villa from which the statues had been removed for the occasion, it was a unique setting to see an old play in the New World.

Evidently, the Greek play caught my attention, and it was explained that Menander’s The Woman from Samos had only recently been recovered from the Egyptian desert and had never been performed before. 

The Egyptian desert as the finding place was an odd fact that I could not place at the time until, one day, I learned about the papyrus heap of Oxyrhynchus (see: Hellenica Oxyrhynchia by P.J. McKechnie and S.J. Kern and Get involved with Oxyrhynchus). At this dumpsite, many Greek texts that had been lost for centuries eventually surfaced. Large fragments have been salvaged, like works by Sappho and Alcaeus, poems by Pindar, and considerable bits of authors like Euripides and Sophocles. Also recovered were the most complete diagrams from Euclid’s Elements, a life of Euripides by Satyrus the Peripatetic, and an epitome of seven of the 120 books of Livy that are otherwise lost.

But among the pile of papyri, Menander benefited most from the finds at Oxyrhynchus, with fragments of Misoumenos, Dis Exapaton, Epitrepontes, Karchedonios, Dyskolos (The Bad-Tempered Man or The Malcontent), and Kolax. At last, we have enough works to recognize his status in the Greek theater.

Menander was an Athenian tragedian who lived in the 4th century BC. He was born around 342 BC, and who knows, Alexander may have heard of him or even seen one of his plays while he was in Asia. Menander was a prolific and much-imitated writer whose success was recognized for centuries after his death. The Romans scrambled to collect unknown plays, which they adapted and translated into Latin. Unfortunately, none of Menander’s plays survived until this chance discovery in the Egyptian desert. 

As I was flipping through a pile of papers, the very program from the Getty Villa fell into my hands again – a most gratifying rekindling of memories. It had been an evening I would never forget.

The popular The Woman from Samos is a play of deception and misunderstanding in which a marriage that everyone desires almost fails to happen, two women and a baby are almost ruined, and a loving father almost loses his only son, because the people at home and the people abroad have both been doing things behind each other's backs - but somehow everything ends happily after all. It is a complicated story, yet played in such a way that it keeps our attention on edge. It was, of course, executed in English translation. 

De Griekse Oudheid in Vijftig Levens (A History of Ancient Greece in Fifty Lives) by David Stuttard

Flipping through a book at a shop – in this case, the bookshop of the Archaeological Museum of Leiden (Netherlands) - is quite different from buying one via the Internet. Actually holding it in my hands and marveling at the pictures and the many familiar names made me fall in love with this book, and I’m certain this would not have happened clicking through the page on the internet. There is that extra dimension, like when holding a paper book as opposed to an eBook.

This is how I ended up buying this Dutch translation of A History of Ancient Greece in Fifty Lives by David Stuttard (ISBN 978-0500252055). Yet the language is not important; it's all about the book’s contents.

Stuttard starts with a chapter Of Gods and Heroes without whom Greece could not exist. Next, he tackles the many men (and one woman, Sappho) who made Greece great, working chronologically and putting them in their own historical context: The Era of the Tyrants, Greece in Peril, the Age of Pericles, World War, Fallout, The Age of the Dynasts, In the Shadow of Rome, and finally Lives in a Mirror.

Instead of relating history through battles and dates, he selects key figures from each era and, through them, projects Greece’s rich past using the views and contributions of politicians, philosophers, kings, artists, generals, etc. The result is a most comprehensive and easy-to-read history of Greece, taking it to a human scale.

Great care has been given to the presentation of this book, with occasional inserts and appropriate pictures. It makes very captivating reading.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the translation in Dutch, "De Griekse Oudheid in Vijftig Levens" (ISBN 9-789401-905725), where words have been mistranslated (speaking of Spaniards instead of Spartans, for instance) and sentences have been twisted to mean the opposite of what is intended. I discovered most of these errors in the chapter on Alexander the Great, which makes me wonder how much the rest of the book is trustworthy. 

David Stuttard has been informed of this unfortunate situation and is taking action.

Another reconstruction of ancient Greek music

In one of my earlier posts on the subject, Reconstructing ancient Greek music, an impossible task? I spoke about Armand D’Angour, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University, who reminded us that the epics of Homer, the love poems of Sappho, and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides originally were music. This means that pieces composed between 750 and 400 BC were to be sung partially or in their totality, accompanied by the lyre, reed pipes, and some percussion instruments.

At present, he and other scholars claim to be able to reconstruct and perform those ancient songs with 100% accuracy. Hereunder is a rendering by David Creese, a classicist from the University of Newcastle. This is an ancient Greek song composed by Seikilos (see: Revealing ancient Greek music, the Seikilos Epitaph) and performed on an eight-string zither-like instrument with movable bridges. 

 

  So, how about that for a lazy afternoon listening?

Reconstructing ancient Greek music, an impossible task?

This is what I thought: it is an impossible task. Lately, I saw a replica of the Seikilos Epitaph from 200 BC/100 AD found in Aydin, Turkey (see: Revealing ancient Greek music, the Seikilos Epitaph). Since then, I have come across many articles treating and analyzing this unique subject.

 

The remains of ancient Greek music are very scant, leaving the impression that music was not popular in ancient Greece. Nothing is further from the truth since music then was all around, in theaters, athletics, education, and everyday life to express joy or sorrow. Ancient Greek music has been brought back to life thanks to, for instance, the achievements of the group LyrAvlos, a contraction of "lyra" (lyre) and "avlos" (flute). The group made several appearances, among which The Athens Hall of Music and the Warsaw Opera shows, the Festival of Old Music in Stockholm, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, the co-operation with the National Orchestra of Athens in the First Greek Musical Celebrations, as well as at the 2004 Olympic Games.

 

Stefos, the leader of Lyravlos, worked hard to construct precise replicas of the old instruments to play the music from eons past. So far, 61 ancient songs have been saved, some on papyrus, others on shards or stone like the above-mentioned Seikilos Epitaph. Such stones and papyri from Egypt, dating overall between 300 BC and 300 AD, show a vocal notation consisting of letters and signs placed above the vowels of the words. Besides, the Greeks had worked out the mathematical ratios of musical intervals, in which an octave is 2:1, a fifth 3:2, and a fourth 4:3.

 

On the other hand, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University, Armand D’Angour, reminds us of Homer's epics, the love poems of Sappho, and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides that originally were music. This means that pieces composed between 750 and 400 BC were to be sung partially or in their totality, accompanied by the lyre, reed pipes, and some percussion instruments.

 

The oldest musical document discovered to date shows only a few bars from Orestes, probably written by Euripides himself in the 5^th century BC. How Euripides exactly fits modern analysis is hard to figure out, but it is known that with the words “I lament” and “I beseech,” he uses a falling, mournful cadence, while with the words “my heart leaps wildly,” the melody is rising. It is astonishing to learn that Athenian soldiers earned their meals while singing Euripides during their captivity in the quarries of Syracuse in 413 BC - a moving detail reported by Plutarch. From Homer, we know that the bards used a four-stringed lyre, the “phormix,” and we may assume that those strings were tuned to the four notes that survived in the later basic Greek scales. 

A thorough analysis has proved that rhythms, for instance, are preserved through the words themselves, based on the short or long syllables. The instruments are known from statues, paintings, and literary descriptions, by which a musician can amazingly find the timbre and range of pitches they produce. For instance, the letter A at the top of the scale is actually a fifth higher than the letter N halfway down the alphabet. Absolute pitch can then be figured out based on the vocal ranges required to sing the surviving tunes. 

Yet this music is very far from our Western conception and comes closer to the sounds produced in India or the Middle East. It seems, however, that instrumental practice from the ancient Greeks still survives in some specific areas of Sardinia and Turkey. More technical details can be found in the article “How did ancient Greek music sound?” by Armand D'Angour.

Another important story is about a chip of papyrus found in a forgotten corner of the Louvre’s basement in 2002. It turned out to be a partition of Medea by Carcinos the Younger (approximately 360 BC) that was mentioned by Aristotle in his Rhetorics, and in which the heroine, unlike in Euripides’ version, is innocent. So today, we can listen to the bewitching aria sung in a deep voice, as in antiquity, the role of women was held by men. Annie Bélis, a world-renowned specialist in ancient music, studied this papyrus and other bits and pieces; she now concentrates on performing both vocal and instrumental scores that have survived, creating an ensemble called Kérylos. All the music partitions are authentic. The already known chorus score from Euripides’ Orestes, and the Seikilos Song of the two Delphic Hymns to the Pythian Apollo, have been deciphered and reproduced in her musical works. Among them, there also is an excerpt from Aristophanes’ Birds (nothing to do with Hadjidakis’ interpretation), a paean by Mesomedes of Crete (favorite composer of Emperor Hadrian), a piece from Carcinos’ Medea mentioned above, and an anonymous paean to the stars to name just a few. 

 

Based on strict archaeological references, Annie Bélis uses carefully rebuilt lyres, kitharas, flutes, and percussion instruments. For instance, statues, mainly of Apollo playing the lyre, and remains of instruments gleaned from different archaeological locations. So far, she has performed with the Ensemble Kérylos in several countries, including Greece, at Delphi. More recently, a special concert in Paris was organized in the frame of the exhibition “Au Royaume d’Alexandre le Grand. La Macédoine Antique” in 2011. Sorry to have missed it. More details can be found on the Kérylos site.

Based on all the above information and interpretation, we can almost recreate Alexander the Great's music. Isn’t that wonderful?

Papyri, a precious source of information

As far back as the ancient Egyptians (i.e., as far back as 4,000 BC), papyrus was used as writing support for essential documents. Manufacturing papyrus is an art by itself and a very time-consuming operation. The papyrus reed has to be picked upstream of the Nile, where the stems are harvested. After being cleaned, the triangular stems were cut into long strips. These thin strips were then laid out in two layers, one horizontal and one vertical, that were then pressed together and dried to form the ultimate papyrus sheet. Thanks to its natural gum, these sheets could also be laid side by side to produce a roll, which, when inscribed, would become the known scrolls from antiquity. It is mind-blowing to think how much reed had to be turned into papyrus to produce all the literature from antiquity. We cannot even imagine how many people were involved in making papyrus, whose production must have been organized on an industrial scale.

In the dry desert climate of Egypt, such scrolls could safely survive for centuries, as was proven by the thousands of pieces that emerged from the garbage heap at Oxyrhynchus. Elsewhere, documents were primarily preserved by chance. One such find happened, for instance, in Herculaneum, the Italian city buried under a thick layer of volcanic ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

In those days, Herculaneum, just like Pompeii, was a plush resort town where rich people from Rome sought solace from the summer heat. One such Roman was Lucius Calpurnis Piso Caesoninus, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, who built a grand seaside villa lavishly decorated with more than eighty bronze and marble statues of the finest quality. This is the Villa that Paul Getty copied in Malibu, California, to house his collection of antiquities.

Besides the impressive collection of artwork, Piso’s Villa also yielded a library of some 2,000 scrolls, the only one that survived from the classical world. Unfortunately, we cannot read any of these scrolls since they turned into lumps of charcoal, the result of the pyroclastic blast that carbonized the papyrus before the city caught fire and sank into oblivion under the volcanic ashes. When first discovered, these black burnt logs were not recognized as scrolls, and some were hacked into pieces. A later conservator of the Vatican tried in the 18th century to painstakingly unroll them, spending four years on one single scroll, and many chips just broke off. Even in the 1980s, experts from Oxford University could not do much, and the reading was challenging even under changing light or under a microscope. Manipulating the papyri did more damage than good as fragments crumbled to dust. Towards the end of the 1990s, infrared light helped to decipher some of the texts, followed by multi-spectral imaging providing more precise images of the letters and texts. Unrolling the scrolls was the major problem. In 2009, the Institut de France in Paris used Computerized Tomography (CT) scans to read the internal surfaces of the scrolls. The task was tough even with this modern technology since the rolls were tightly wound and creased. The easy sections could be converted into 2D images, but another problem arose when it was discovered that the chemistry of the ink blended with the chemistry of the paper; the main reason is that ancient ink does not contain any metal.

This all means that we may need new technology or procedures to come to our rescue to decipher these scrolls that may contain lost works from known or even unknown antique authors.

The Hellenistic world, which ruled the Mediterranean roughly from 323 to 31 BC, counted several major libraries, the best known and probably the greatest being the Library of Alexandria, founded in 300 BC. It was severely damaged by Julius Caesar’s fire in 48 BC and was finally destroyed at some time between 270 and 275 AD during the attack of Emperor Aurelius. Next in order was the Library of Pergamon, with some 200,000 volumes, which Marc Anthony “generously” gave to his wife, Queen Cleopatra. The Roman Empire created its own libraries in Rome, often apparently located in separate buildings containing Greek and Latin works. We possess a catalog listing all the facilities of Rome from circa 350 AD, in which no less than 29 public libraries are mentioned!

It is clear that since Hellenistic times, many people were literate and could read either or both Greek and Latin texts. What a shame that so much knowledge and such linguistic skills have been lost since then!

In an article published in the BBC News Magazine,  Robert Fowler, Professor of Classics at the University of Bristol, was so kind as to compose a list of the main lost works from antiquity: 

Aeschylus - only 7 of his 80 plays survive

Aristophanes - 11 out of 40 plays survive

Ennius - his epic poem Annales, is almost entirely lost

Euripides - 18 of his 90 plays survive

Livy - three-quarters of his History of Rome is lost

Sappho - most of her nine books of lyric poems are lost

Sophocles - only 7 entire plays survive of the 120 he wrote

But returning to the Villa dei Papyri, we should be aware that the scrolls found so far lay in and around one room, but there are more rooms on the same level that have never been excavated, nor have the lower levels of the house been. Some of the scrolls discovered were packed in tubular boxes (capsae) used to carry them around, which could imply they came from another room or another part of the Villa. There is a theory that this Villa was not only a holiday residence but a mouseion, a place where the owner could show off his collections of works of art and literature.

New and more in-depth excavations in Herculaneum may answer many of the above questions. Still, the Italian authorities are not too keen to allow more digging as the archaeological site is located just underneath the modern town of Ercolano. This is an understandable argument, of course, but let us not forget that Mount Vesuvius is an ever-present menace, the last major eruption occurred in 1944, and the next one may bury the fragile remains of Herculaneum under an even deeper layer of ashes.

[Picture of the Getty Villa is from their site - click here]

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea. Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill.



Quite astonishing what Thomas Cahill has to reveal in Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea. Why the Greeks Matter (ISBN 0385495544). I wish my history lessons at school had looked something like this, but maybe this knowledge is rather reserved for the advanced and intrepid readers – in all modesty! As much as Arrian’s book on the Campaigns of Alexander the Great is the key reading for everybody interested in Alexander, this book by Thomas Cahill is the one to get an overall view of our Western civilization, including an in-depth understanding of Alexander, of course.

This book is, in fact, Part Four of Cahill’s series published under the global name of “The Hinges of History”, comprising:

1. How the Irish saved civilization – The untold story of Ireland’s heroic role from the fall of Rome to the rise of Medieval Europe

2. The gifts of the Jews - How a tribe of desert nomads changed the way everyone thinks and feels

3. Desire of the everlasting hills - The world before and after Jesus

4. Sailing the wine-dark sea - Why the Greeks matter.

5. 6. 7. Are still under construction.

So many aspects of Greek life are being treated here that I can only mention a handful of the most striking or pertinent elements, like, for instance, Herodotus’ remark that “No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace: in peace children bury their fathers, while in war fathers bury their children”. Nothing new under the sun, you’ll say, as it applies to today’s circumstances as it did thousands of years ago.

One aspect that is being examined is that for the first time in history, the Greeks invented an alphabet containing vowels, meaning that reading was no longer a gamble, as opposed to the old Phoenician, Persian, and even Arab words that had no vowels. This newly written Greek language was so clear that even women (!), children, and slaves could learn to read and write. The “secrecy” of written language suddenly disappears, the curtain is lifted, and suddenly a whole world becomes available to everybody. Consequently, the centuries-old oral communities (not knowing writing) that needed to do things together and required much more imagination are now, thanks to the written text, replaced by individuals able to think for themselves, which in turn leads to rational analysis. All very logical, but I never thought of it …

And then there is the Iliad! Cahill states that it was a very daring enterprise for Homer to write a book that covered only the last four days of a war that lasted ten years! Yes, that is what surprised me too when I first read the Iliad,  but it is even more amazing to find that the feeling of a ten-year-long war is so much alive in the book. After Homer, we must wait several centuries for new books to appear, especially longer works and extensive writings. This is simply because it took a long time to import enough lightweight papyrus from Egypt so that the new texts could be “transported”.

Another aspect that is being highlighted is the Greeks’ thrive for competition, one that is still running through the blood of today’s population, I feel. Their need for competition arose in many different fields and not only during festivals or games. It was a way to catch the attention of the general public. This meant that one potter would take it up against an other, one stone-cutter against the other, and also the one poet against the other. The choruses singing the background tale during a theatre performance needed poets to write their parts. Athletes paid fortunes to have their prowess praised by a good poet. The burial ceremonies of important men needed poets to perform “funeral games” to sing hymns of praise that would surpass any previous ones.

And then there is the subject of music in ancient Greece. It seems they knew something called “moods”, which we in our modern Western world limit to minor (sad) and major (happy). The old Greeks seem to have known five of such moods: Doric was warlike, Phrygian expressed contentedness, Ionic sounded tempting, Eolian, and Lydian. For the ancient Greeks, to live without music meant as much as being dead – that is what Sophocles said anyway. Looking at it from that point of view, it is evident that theatre with its choruses is only a stone’s throw away.

Thomas Cahill also spent time explaining the Greek “symposia”, the event where men with the same interests met in order to philosophize and drink together. [The Greek symposion became the Latin symposium, the plural in both cases being symposia – literally “a joint drinking”]. Clearly, a happening that was not exclusively known in Macedonia, although they may have been or probably were rougher than what happened in civilized Athenian circles… These kinds of banquets were held in someone’s home, in a special room called an andron, literally “men’s room”, while the idea was more that of a men’s club from the upper class. The gentlemen were stretched on comfortable couches, wide enough to accommodate two or three guests together. They wore floral crowns  (Oliver Stone must have had a very close look to portray the banquet held in honor of Philip’s wedding with Cleopatra) ate from tables loaded with all kinds of food and were treated to music while wine was carried around by servants – usually teenage boys or female hetairai, literally “companions” in the style of geisha’s or call-girls. Young girls were generally kept away from these parties, at least in good society.

From the overall stories, one would expect the Greeks to eat lots of meat because meat was always used in the sacrifices to the gods, either sheep, goat, pork, or beef. Yet nothing is further from the truth since the daily meals were simply fish (including shellfish) and bread. In fact, nothing has changed much over the centuries since in ancient Greece cuisine as in those days, they appreciated artichokes fried in olive oil, or spitted fowl, fresh greens, fruit, nuts, and even fat Sicilian cheeses (if they were lucky). It all was washed down with diluted wine – the amount of water to be added was the responsibility of the host. 

On these occasions, besides the contribution of each individual guest, professional entertainers were called in to set the tone for a diverting and enjoyable evening. Soon, the guests would rise from their couches to dance through the night, arm in arm, pounding their feet in a fashion not too remote from Zorba the Greek’s dance. This is described lyrically as if “there was a soul struggling to carry away his flesh and cast itself like a meteor into the darkness”. By the way, the word “lyric” was first used by Homer because this poetry was usually sung to a lyre. 

Well, these are only a few facets of the many that Cahill is treating in his book, which is, in fact, a true and thorough analysis of the Greek way of thinking and being. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea is composed of seven distinctive Chapters:

The Warrior – How to Fight, examining the “Iliad”

The Wanderer – How to Feel, treating the “Odyssey”

The Poet – How to Party, mainly centered on the poetess Sappho

The Politician and the Playwright – How to Rule, handling politics and theater plays with Solon, Aischylos, Sophocles, Euripides, etc

The Philosopher – How to think, a scientific chapter with geniuses like Thales, Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, etc

The Artist – How to see, about Greek statues, starting with male figures, to which female figures were added in a later stage

The Way they went – Graeco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian, which evidently treats religion.

To summarize, this is the ultimate book handling all facets of the Classic Greek world – extremely captivating reading!